Animosity “Animal”

Animosity is back with their third effort, entitled ‘Animal’. Formed around 2000, they have released some pretty brutal albums, both of which are scene setters in the deathcore community. ‘Set It Off’ and ‘Empires’ are solid albums, with little to criticize. In comes ‘Animal’, produced by Kurt Ballou (Converge) at God City Studios, this is one beautifully raw album of anger. Throw in some guest vocal work from Guy (The Red Chord) and you know what you’re about to get before you even give it a listen.

‘Animal’ starts you off with what I feel is the rawest song on the album; it almost feels like a live version of “Terrorstorm”. This makes the song come to life with the intense drum work, solid guitars and the shrieks and growls of Leo. “Tooth Grinder” is more brutal deathcore, but sounds more like some of their music on ‘Empires’. Animosity have grown together as a band, as musicians, and have not really changed anything about their sound. It is refreshing to know that what you are getting is just a better effort from a veteran band as opposed to the likes of Avenged Sevenfold (metalcore – heavy metal – hard rock – r&b?).

Each song on this album truly comes to life while you listen to the craziness of Navene on drums. He incorporates a lot of different genres into his style, which is definitely subtle yet noticeable, and altogether amazing. The outcome of course is speed drumming in its heaviest form, but you can tell there are influences outside of metal. Leo is definitely a class act. Aside from his amazing silver teeth, this angry fucker knows how to growl. Vocals definitely help bring this band to the top of an ever growing death/hardcore community. At the front lines of the musical masterpiece are Frank and Chase on the axes. Both use speed to their advantage. They play together with a group agenda, which some bands forget about. The album itself doesn’t have many solos (if any), but the overall guitar work is very pleasing, and definitely shows a growth in technicality throughout their albums.

‘Animal’ is by far Animosity’s most ferocious album to date as well as most technically sound album. They have again raised the bar of a genre that is growing rather poorly. This is a must own for fans of death metal, hardcore, and metal.